The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

“Have you ever visited the convent of St. Ekatarina, Brother?” asked Marcus, not a little sarcastically.

“Nay, I have not. I will thank you not to take that tone with me, Brother.”

“Then I will only say that it is an isolated place and very difficult to gain access to. What are we going to do about her? Is she a danger to us?”

Anne did turn now. Whatever expression she had turned away to hide had vanished. She looked as cool and collected as ever. “Did she seem to you a danger?”

“She seemed evasive. She is called Mother Obligatia now, but I did not see her face. I had nothing to judge her by except her voice, and she sounded old and frail, not robust.”

“Voices can be deceptive. We were misled once. There is more here than meets the eye.”

Truly, thought Antonia, there was far more here than met the eye. Sister Anne did not have all of Earth under her control, although after a year or more at Verna one might begin to think so. Who was Lavrentia? Why was she important enough to be discussed in such terms? But she had already asked enough questions. She did not want to draw any suspicion that she might be less loyal to their cause than she appeared on the surface. Mercifully, Zoë did not fear to speak her mind.

“Who is this Lavrentia, and this Mother Obligatia, or whatever you call her?” she demanded. “I’ve never heard of her. Of what interest is she to us?”

Even Marcus remained silent, watching Sister Anne.

“She was the woman who gave birth to me.”

“Your mother!” cried Zoë, looking amazed at the revelation, or perhaps only amazed that a woman like Anne had actually had a mother.

“Nay. She was not my mother except that it was in her womb that I was conceived and nurtured, her womb from which I was expelled. I never saw her.” Anne lifted the armillary sphere. It was large for her to carry alone, but the ripples that marked the servants helped her, blowing the air beneath her hands to give her lift. She set it down heavily, and the whole table shuddered under its weight. Erekes spun lightly. Mok shifted a finger’s breadth, and the bright halo of the Sun shook but did not move. “The woman whom I consider my mother is the one who raised me. It is her influence that guided what I have become.”

Antonia could puzzle out most of the rest, but a few questions remained unanswered. “Was this Lavrentia the daughter of Emperor Taillefer, or his daughter-in-law?” And if she had been related only by marriage, then how had Queen Radegundis hidden her son?

Anne merely looked at her, then spun Aturna. The mechanism was ponderous on the outermost sphere, and the planet of wisdom moved only a short way. “It is true that I am the daughter of Emperor Taillefer’s son. But he and Lavrentia form the lesser part of my lineage. I was raised by a woman named Clothilde, and it was she who tutored me in the arts of the mathematici, just as she herself was tutored by Biscop Tallia. First and foremost, it is to Biscop Tallia that I claim kinship. In truth, the biscop was my aunt, but in every other way I think of her as the woman who created me. She is the mother who gave birth to all of us, the Seven Sleepers, the ones who, in the last hundred years, have labored to prevent this catastrophe.”

So Liath, and so Sanglant: two children born out of enemy camps. If the Seven Sleepers prepared for cataclysm on Earth, then surely the Aoi were making their own plans—wherever they might be, concealed in the aether. Why else go to the trouble to travel through the veils that separated one sphere from the next? Why else send one of their women to Earth to make a child bred half out of humankind and half out of Aoi?

Once, she had supported Sabella’s claim because she believed in it. But Sabella was under the care of Biscop Constance in Autun now. She held no grudge against Sabella for her failed attempt at the throne; God had chosen to lend Their support in another place. And perhaps They had chosen otherwise because, like the angels and the daimones, They could see both into the past and into the future. They had seen this day coming.

And she knew just how to take advantage of it.

4

LIATH returned unexpectedly. Sanglant had just settled Blessing into Jerna’s embrace. The infant was a silent, efficient eater; she would latch on and suckle, and when she was done, she was done. She had the heft to show for it, all pudgy arms and legs, but sometimes he wondered exactly what kind of nourishment she was imbibing, and why she seemed to be growing so fast.

Better not to think too much about that. When a man extended a hand to you when you were drowning, you didn’t stop to ask him his rank and breeding, or if he had leprosy.

“Sanglant.”

o;Have you ever visited the convent of St. Ekatarina, Brother?” asked Marcus, not a little sarcastically.

“Nay, I have not. I will thank you not to take that tone with me, Brother.”

“Then I will only say that it is an isolated place and very difficult to gain access to. What are we going to do about her? Is she a danger to us?”

Anne did turn now. Whatever expression she had turned away to hide had vanished. She looked as cool and collected as ever. “Did she seem to you a danger?”

“She seemed evasive. She is called Mother Obligatia now, but I did not see her face. I had nothing to judge her by except her voice, and she sounded old and frail, not robust.”

“Voices can be deceptive. We were misled once. There is more here than meets the eye.”

Truly, thought Antonia, there was far more here than met the eye. Sister Anne did not have all of Earth under her control, although after a year or more at Verna one might begin to think so. Who was Lavrentia? Why was she important enough to be discussed in such terms? But she had already asked enough questions. She did not want to draw any suspicion that she might be less loyal to their cause than she appeared on the surface. Mercifully, Zoë did not fear to speak her mind.

“Who is this Lavrentia, and this Mother Obligatia, or whatever you call her?” she demanded. “I’ve never heard of her. Of what interest is she to us?”

Even Marcus remained silent, watching Sister Anne.